Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1750837AbWEDBgL (ORCPT ); Wed, 3 May 2006 21:36:11 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750840AbWEDBgK (ORCPT ); Wed, 3 May 2006 21:36:10 -0400 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:49834 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750837AbWEDBgJ (ORCPT ); Wed, 3 May 2006 21:36:09 -0400 Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 18:35:54 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: Al Viro Cc: hpa@zytor.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@osdl.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] symlink nesting level change Message-Id: <20060503183554.87f0218d.akpm@osdl.org> In-Reply-To: <20060503030849.GZ27946@ftp.linux.org.uk> References: <14CFC56C96D8554AA0B8969DB825FEA0012B309B@chicken.machinevisionproducts.com> <44580CF2.7070602@tlinx.org> <20060503030849.GZ27946@ftp.linux.org.uk> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 2.2.4 (GTK+ 2.8.17; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1497 Lines: 38 On Wed, 3 May 2006 04:08:49 +0100 Al Viro wrote: > No. It's way past time to bump it to 8. Everyone had been warned - for > months now. > > Signed-off-by: Al Viro > ---- > --- a/include/linux/namei.h 2006-03-31 20:08:42.000000000 -0500 > +++ b/include/linux/namei.h 2006-05-02 23:06:46.000000000 -0400 > @@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ > struct file *file; > }; > > -enum { MAX_NESTED_LINKS = 5 }; > +enum { MAX_NESTED_LINKS = 8 }; > > struct nameidata { > struct dentry *dentry; It's a non-back-compatible change which means that people will install 2.6.18+, will set stuff up which uses more that five nested links and some will discover that they can no longer run their software on older kernels. It'll only hurt a very small number of people, but for those people, it will hurt a lot. And I can't really think of anything we can do to help them, apart from making the new behaviour runtime-controllable, defaulting to "off", but add a once-off printk when we hit MAX_NESTED_LINKS, pointing them at a document which tells them how to turn on the new behaviour and which explains the problems. Which sucks. But I guess as major distros are 2.6.16-based, this is a good time to make this change. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/